Nike Basics

nike.wellesley.edu is a file server
where students in computer science classes may store their files
during the semester.

Accounts and Passwords

In order to store files on Nike, you need a Nike account name and
password. Your Nike account name is the same as your FirstClass
username. That is, it is the first letter of your first name followed
by your last name. As with FirstClass usernames, the Nike username is
limited to eight characters, so your last name will be truncated if
it is longer than this. Also, your username may end in a digit to
distinguish you from other users with similar first and last names.
For example:

Student Name

Nike Account Name

Georgia Dome

gdome

Abby Stracksen

astracks

Janet Lee

jlee3

You need a password to access your account. During the first week
of class, you will get a chance to choose your own password. Your
Nike password should be at least 6 characters long, should not be
easily guessable by person or computer (no English words, people or
place names, or dates), and should be different from the password for
your FirstClass account.

Both account names and passwords on Nike are case sensitive. Your
account names consist only of lowercase letters. Your passwords may
contain both lowercase and uppercase letters, but you must get the
case of each character right in order for the password to be
accepted.

If you forget your password during the term, please contact your
instructor.

Directories

A Nike directory is a structure that contains files and other
directories. It corresponds to a folder on a Mac of PC. Associated
with every Nike account is a home directory in which files for
the account are stored. Whenever you connect to Nike via an FTP
client (see below), you will be connected to your home directory by
default, though it is possible to navigate to other directories as
well.

The name of the home directory is the same as the account name.
All home directories on Nike are located within another directory
named users, which itself is located in a
top-level directory named usr. Directory
and file names are often specified as a path name containing
the sequence of directories that must be traversed to get from the
"top" of the file system to the desired directory or file. Path names
are written with the components separated by slash ('/')
characters. For example, Georgia Dome's home directory is
/usr/users/gdome, and the Robotic Design
Studio home directory is /usr/users/rds.
The /usr/users/ path prefix is so common
that it is abbreviated by a tilde ('~').
So ~gdome is an abbreviation for
/usr/users/gdome.

Each user directory for a Robotics Design Studio studen has been
preconfigured with a number of special directories. We will
illustrate the special directories associated with account
gdome; you should substitute your own
account name for gdome:

~gdome/public_html : This is where
all publicly accessible personal files not related to your
final project should be placed. This includes .html,
.gif, .jpeg,
and .au files for web pages as well as
.class files for applets. Any files in
this directory will be visible not only to web browsers, but to
your classmates as well.

~gdome/private : This is where all
private files (i.e., those not intended for your classmate's eyes)
should be placed. Note that files in this directory are viewable
by your instructors, so they are not completely "private".

~rds/rds01/projects/gdome : This
is where all files (web pages, code, etc) related to your final
project should be placed. (We will call this your "project
directory".) The reason that your final project files go in a
different place is that they will become part of the Robotic
Design Studio museum. After wintersession, the contents of the
~gdome folder will be deleted, but the
contents of ~rds/rds01/projects/gdome
will remain part of the Robotic Design Studio museum forever.

Security

Only you are able to write files to or delete files from your home
directory, project directory, or any subdirectories thereof. Any
attempt to write files in another students' home directory or project
directory will fail.

Only you are able to read files in your private directory (and
subdirectories thereof). However, by default, all directories other
than your private directory are world readable, which means
that anyone may read them. If you want files to be private, you
should store them in your private folder.

Note that your instructors have the ability to read, write, and
delete any of your files. However we will only look at files in your
private directory in unusual circumstances.

Transferring Files From/To Nike

To transfer files between Nike and your local computer, you need
to use a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client on your local computer.
An FTP client for PCs is Winsock-FTP.
An FTP client for Macs is Fetch.
Click on the above links for more details about these
applications.

Quotas

Because storage resources on Nike are limited, each student
account has a 10 megabyte (MB) file system quota that cannot be
exceeded. This is about the amount of storage on 6 floppy disks. If
you keep lots of files, or even just a few large ones (such as
images), you may find yourself pushing the 10MB limit. An attempt to
store a file that will exceed the quota will fail. In this case, you
will need to delete some older files in order to be able to store new
ones.

If you find that you need more than 10MB of space for your final
project web pages (e.g., you might have lots of images or a movie),
please contact your instructor to increase your quota.

Backup Your Nike Files!

File servers like Nike sometimes fail. In some cases, they may
become inaccessible for long periods of time; in other cases, they
may actually lose information. For both of these reasons, we require
you to keep copies of all your work during the course on your own
personal floppy disks or Zip disks. That way, if Nike should become
inaccessible or lose files, you will still be able to proceed with
your work.

Because floppy and Zip disks themselves are unreliable storage
media, you should make
backup copies of your floppy and Zip disks on a regular basis
during the semester. Since student accounts on Nike will be deleted
after the semester ends, you should be sure to save on your personal
disks any Nike files that you wish to keep for the future.